Apple iPad 2 Online Shipments Pushed Back, Japan Launch Shelved

Apple iPad 2 is now delayed four to five weeks on its online store. Meanwhile, the company has delayed the iPad 2's Japan launch following the earthquake and tsunami.

Customers who order an iPad 2 via Apple's online store will need to wait
between four to five weeks for their tablet to arrive.
While Apple has not yet released official sales figures for the iPad 2's
first weekend of release, a selected number of analysts feel the company will
sell between 500,000 and 600,000 of the next-generation tablets. In a March 8
research note, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicted that the tablet
will sell 1 million units faster than its first-generation predecessor, which took
28 days to reach that mark. Part of the reason for the quicker sales, he
argued, is the iPad's availability at a broader collection of retail stores.

On March 14, the iPad 2's first day of wide release, eWEEK
toured three Apple stores in Manhattan and found similarly long lines at
each. Across the country, Apple's retail partners-including Best Buy, Walmart,
Target, AT&T and Verizon-reported shortages and outright sellouts of the
tablet.

Heading midway into its first week of release, Apple repeatedly pushed back
the expected shipping date for online iPad 2 sales, from two to three weeks to
nearly twice as long. Whether by intention or genuine inability to deal with a
flood of orders, other Apple products have endured similar delays and pushbacks
in launches past. Apple's iPhone 4, for example, led to a meltdown of both
Apple's and AT&T's ordering systems on the first day of presales, followed
by the pushback of the preorder shipment date.
The iPhone 4 sold some 1.7 million units in the smartphone's first day of
release. "My phone is ringing off the hook for people who want more
supply," Apple COO Tim Cook told
analysts and investors listening to the company's July 2010 earnings call. "We're
selling everything we can make." That suggested to some pundits that
demand had strained Apple's manufacturing capacity.
Research firm IDC recently suggested that
Apple's share of the tablet market declined from 93 percent in the third
quarter of 2010 to 73 percent in the fourth quarter. Despite the presence of
more competitors in the space, including the high-end Motorola Xoom, IDC
expects that Apple will manage to maintain a 70 percent to 80 percent share of
the tablet market in 2011. A tide of new iPad owners could help make that
happen, provided Apple continues to manufacture devices at a rate to match
demand.

Meanwhile, Apple announced that it had halted the iPad 2's scheduled rollout
in Japan,
following the earthquake and tsunami that flattened wide swaths of that country
and precipitated a meltdown crisis at one of its nuclear power plants. The iPad
2 had originally been scheduled to arrive on Japanese store shelves March 25. According to
the Wall Street Journal, the company has not announced a new release date.

Nicholas Kolakowski is a staff editor at eWEEK, covering Microsoft and other companies in the enterprise space, as well as evolving technology such as tablet PCs. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Playboy, WebMD, AARP the Magazine, AutoWeek, Washington City Paper, Trader Monthly, and Private Air. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.